Aldo van den Broek - FERNWEH

After July 30th, the exhibition will be open by appointment from 3 - 20 August.

Recurring themes in Aldo van den Broek work are history, underground, punk and romanticism. They characterize the world where he lets architecture and people meet. He is fascinated by the urge of people to strive for safety and freedom simultaneously and the deconstruction that usually follows. Travels and experiences bring valuable inspiration to his work. His researches brought him to Berlin and the post-communistic suburbs of Belgrade and Tbilisi.

Aldo’s work reflects his interpretation of purity and beauty within ugliness. Therefore, he choses to work with wasted materials with no apparent value. Used and re-used by himself, or found on the streets and abandoned places. By literally using his own past failures as a beginning for his new works, these different themes are constantly transforming and melting together till they reach their final appearance.

In 2015 Aldo got invited to the artist in residence ‘Beautiful Distress’ to stay four months at the psychiatric department of ‘Kings Count Hospital’, the only mental institution in New York with a government-sponsored health insurance. By living so intensively in between mostly poor and mentally ill people he got confronted with his own way of thinking, living, working and surviving. FERNWEH is Aldo’s longing for a confusing and non-existent place.

Aldo van den Broek lives and works in Berlin. In 2015 he was nominated for the prestigious Prix de Rome. His work was shown a.o. at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Loyd Hotel, Amsterdam, Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam,The Armory Show in New York, Sucked Orange gallery, Berlin, Köningsstadt gallery, Berlin, Galerie J.J. Heckenhauer, Brussels and the Berlin Art Week.